Nillu Nasser's Blog, page 11

My Happy List

Photo by Hartwig HKD

There are some things that just make me happy, like sitting in a park and watching aeroplanes flying through a blanket of clouds. Certain music tracks. What a joy it is to plug in some earphones and cancel out all the noise apart from what you are choosing to listen to. A glass of water when you’re really thirsty. The relaxation part at the end of a yoga class, when you’re drifting somewhere between simple thoughts and sleep. A hot bath when my Kindle is charged so I don’...

On Tunnel Vision, the Pain of Waiting and the Gift of True Attention

Photo by Chad McDonald

I’m less patient than I used to be. Some of it has to do with personal growth. I know what I want, and who I want to spend my time with, and while I have compassion, there is more of an edge to me than before. My antennae are finely tuned. I am more likely than ever to call out nonsense or step away altogether.

Still, we’re all less patient on this side of the hemisphere, aren’t we? I’ve written before about how we want things more and more quickly. I get impatient wait...

Through My Eyes

Photo by Nick Kenrick

I lie in the concrete box of my bedroom
inside the mausoleum of my childhood house
with no means of escape

My body is as heavy as a corpse
my gaze is mostly fixed, still I hear
the mocking flick of leaves on the asphalt outside

You come to visit with frozen smiles
I must endure your grasping, childish ramblings
as if my intellectual prowess is diminished

Little do you know the universe rains stars in my mind
as I lie here statue-like, unable to communicate,
how impending...

How to Find Your Place in the World

Photo by Moyan Brenn

Lately I’ve felt like I’ve lost my place in the world. It happens rarely, this feeling of being in limbo, but when it does, it is a reassessment of who I am and what I have achieved, and often I’m not kind to myself. The best approach is always to give myself some breathing space, to write out my thoughts, and eventually to refocus.

This is what I journaled in the most recent bout:

I am nothing.
I am hopelessness and hate
below a veneer of humanity
I am sweat-slickened ex...

For the other N

Photo by Mirjana Veljovic

An oasis of sisterhood
stretched through the years
a safe space with no room for malice
or the tired battles of competition

How grateful I am
for the whispered secrets
the phone calls where we
unravelled the knots in each other’s lives

I think back to distant moons
both sheltered by parental love
but not immune to the passions of childhood
perspective looming like a grotesque carnival

We took comfort in the certainty of youth
though we had not long outgrown
pigtails...

On Hope and Small Spheres of Change

Photo by abstractartangel77

When I was small, my parents used to worry I was too idealistic, a prime target for people to take advantage of. It made them protective, and less trusting of any reaches for independence. Even today, when the years have mellowed my idealism, I don’t see idealism as something that skews perspective, that is somehow unintelligent. I reject that it is realism’s poorer sister. I see it as a superpower. It is hope. It is strength.

I’ve struggled to find optimism recent...

Them and Us

Photo by Pen Waggener

I try to keep politics off this blog. That’s the common advice, isn’t it? Not to alienate potential readers by being overtly political. It’s like bringing politics up at dinner parties or with family. There’s something unsavoury about it. Rarely does consensus come out of political conversations unless you are talking to like-minded people.

But then, sometimes politics becomes so inextricably entwined with the daily grind of life that it is hard to crow bar it off the pa...

On Fear and Love

Photo by Nick Kenrick

I’ve not posted here for a while. I had lost my way. Sometimes the only thing to do is to retreat into your shell, hide away, let the storms of fear and despair pass. Maybe I’m still lost, but it helps to turn up to a blank page, to coax the swirl of words inside to organise themselves into a pattern I can make sense of. Like a ribbon threaded through beads of thoughts.

I wonder sometimes, if what drives me to this place of quiet is the world, or if it is me. I’ve been t...

The Oral Tradition, and a Ghost Story from Me

Photo by Elena Penkova

I used to have a university professor, who didn’t have a television. Back then, I thought that astounding. How could someone be that puritan, so as to say such a firm no to pop culture? I liked him, that professor. He read a lot. He was thoughtful and measured in his responses, and spoke more slowly than I was used to. I wonder if he still has no telly.

We know it well, this century, the deceptively alluring call of the box, the restlessness of channel surfing when you...

Tiny You

Photo by Hartwig HKD

My stomach swells
from beneath the swirl of bathwater
I sink until every inch of me
is pressed to the white enamel
internalising
hearing the drum of my heartbeat
eyelids closed, imagining
multiplying cells and spirit
the newly forming life inside
the walls of my red womb

I already love you more
than myself, this final gift
though I have not yet seen
the monochrome hospital scans
nor heard the galloping race of your heart
or worshipped the curl of your lashes
or buried my...